An action thriller by Jock Miller
Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.
The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.
As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.
The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.
The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.
Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.
Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?
HOPEFUL ENERGY STORIES: Concern for Wildlife Alters Energy Plans
Photograph by Joel Sartore
Bison cluster on the native grassland at Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, just one example of the Nebraska wildlife in the ecosystem at the center of a major energy battle this year—the fight over the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.
Pressure built against the project in part over concern for the unique 19,600-square-mile (51,000-square-kilometer) ecosystem in Nebraska called the Sandhills, and the Obama administration blocked the proposed pipeline route. (See "Pictures: Animals That Blocked Keystone XL Pipeline Path.") TransCanada says it remains fully committed to the project to move crude from Canada's oil sands some 1,700 miles (2,740 kilometers) to refineries in Texas, and a decision on a revised plan is expected from Washington early in 2013.
Climate change activists are sure to continue their opposition, because of concern over carbon-intensive oil sands production. But the debate forced a rethinking of the project with renewed attention on the importance of protecting the Sandhills and the underlying Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to about 2 million people in Nebraska and seven other states.
On the other side of the globe, in Sabah, Malaysia, threats to the critically endangered Sumatran rhino and vibrant coral reefs derailed a planned coal-fired power plant in one of the region's top biological hot spots—an ecotourism destination to boot. While green advocates hope to see renewable energy thrive here, Sabah's short-term needs will be filled by a 300-megawatt natural gas plant, which is cleaner than the coal alternative. (See "Concern Over Rare Rhino Rouses Clean Energy Drive in Malaysia.")
—Brian Handwerk
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